


your hands on mine

by annperkinsface



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 12:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12935370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annperkinsface/pseuds/annperkinsface
Summary: “There will be no slithering out of this,” Sophie says with no small measure of wickedness or triumph, sitting astride Howl and holding those fine, bird boned wrists in one hand.(In the bedroom or out the bedroom, Sophie has Howl well in hand.)





	your hands on mine

“There will be no slithering out of this,” Sophie says with no small measure of wickedness or triumph, sitting astride Howl and holding those fine, bird boned wrists in one hand. How bony he is, she marvels, shifting over the awkward jut of his hips with excruciating deliberateness and relishing his choked off sound. How vain and foolish and so, so dear. A peacock of a sorcerer, really, and yet there is something of the way Howl swallows and stares, hands flexing in her grip, pulse in both wrist and throat like a bird’s, fluttering like mad. The slitherer-outer, pinned down at last.

Howl recovers enough to leer and waggle his eyebrows, the effect more comical than rakish, and Sophie more wonders than despairs that he ever managed to break any hearts at all. “Apparently not,” Howl laughs. “As bossy in bed as you are out of it, it seems! I shouldn't be so surprised. Your bossiness is positively the least unexpected thing about you, Sophie, and yet here I am, stunned anew. Stunned and unable to slither—”

I dare say I’m not, Sophie thinks, but then very little surprises Sophie about herself anymore. One finds there to be hardly any surprises left when you've lived as a 90 year old woman much less done things like talk a stick into beating a fire demon to death.

“—truly, it makes an alarming amount of sense—”

“Alarming,” says Sophie incredulously. Howl does so love the sound of his own voice. “Is that how you’re feeling right now? Alarmed?”

“Alarmed, aroused, attentive; all manner of a’s, really. I shall let you take your pick,” Howl says, crooking a smile up at her. “Whichever is to your fancy, my dear?”

“Addled,” says Sophie. “All your fool self’s doing, of course. To think I had the notion that you could ever stop yammering long enough for me to take you to bed.”

“Well, we _are_ in bed,” says Howl. “So well done there. I suppose all that’s left is for you to take me. Do promise to be gentle. I am of a very delicate constitution.”

Sophie laughs. There is more of that between them than ever and yet she always sounds surprised, like Howl had tricked it out of her. “You needn't tell me that,” Sophie says, shifting her grip on his wrists before he can get too smug and hiding a smile in his collarbone when his breath hitches. “I've been privy to your tantrums, Mister Green Ooze.”

“Would that make you Mrs. Green Ooze then?”

“Not anymore than I am Mrs. Slitherer-outer,” says Sophie primly. “Which brings us back to the matter at hand.”

“Hand,” says Howl musingly. “Rather apt choice of word, that. You have the two and I am down to none. For someone so obsessed with cleanliness you fight dirty, you know that, Madame Ooze?”

She can do without the ooze part but Madame—Sophie rather likes the sound of that, just like she likes that for all his pretense Howl's eyes are bright and he is staying right where she wants him, the slopes and planes of his body spread out before her like a map of Wales, geography she vaguely knows and wants to become better acquainted with.

She thinks the analogy would be better served if they both weren't still wearing clothes but it’s just like Howl to make her do all the work.

“Of course, I am the eldest,” Sophie says, thinking of a million sibling quarrels, then frowns and leans back to get a better look at him. “But Howl—is this really all right?”

Alarmed, he’d said. Typical Howl theatrics, perhaps, but he handles her so cautiously for all the hearts he’s supposedly eaten. And Sophie, well. She’s only ever had a delicate hand with a needle and thread.

Howl’s face lights with confusion but then takes on the cast it does when he is about to say something truly awful. His mouth twists. “I suppose I shall have to screw my courage to the sticking place.”

Sophie despairs. “Howl!”

“Sophie!” Howl says laughingly.

“This isn't—ugh, I am trying to be serious, you cad,” Sophie snaps, well and truly cross. “And I don’t have the faintest clue as to what that means. Are you being vulgar?”

“Not as such, though that's a delightful interpretation. I must share it with one of my uni professors some time,” Howl says, laughing more than ever. “ _Yes_ , it’s all right. You needn’t fear for my virtue, Sophie, not when little remains to fear for.”

It seems silly when put like that. She thinks she should be more concerned with hers but her own virtue never seemed to factor in her mental calculations. Just Howl at her mercy, pink flushed and pleading.

She supposes she ought to quit dallying and get to work.

“Good, you’ve stopped scowling,” Howl notes, self-satisfaction rife in his voice. Sophie’s hackles raise when he says imperiously, “Now give me a kiss, will you?”

“Who’s bossy now?” Sophie grumps but her hold slackens then breaks, fingers sliding over his cheek and into that unnatural hair. The fingers of her other hand splay on his chest, over the heart she restored to him, and its rhythmic thumping is almost enough to make her smile.

“You,” says Howl, smiling. His eyes and mouth have gone soft. “Always, always you.”

Sophie is hard pressed to disagree especially when her hand has skirted down his stomach and Howl is making some of the most interesting noises yet.

“Sophie, Sophie,” Howl pants into her mouth, hands hovering over her hips but refraining from touching, not without her say so. “Can I touch you?”

Sophie smiles.

She says, “Not quite yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> featuring surprisingly maidenly howl in the face of force of nature sophie. because you can't describe howl as slithery and not have my brain be like 'oh sophie totally tops him.' 
> 
> let me know if this fic or dynamic works for you! i had a lot of fun with it.


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